Last week saw the publication of Batman Incorporated 2, marking the end of seven years of Grant Morrison’s Batman writing. So naturally I bought it and commenced re-reading eleven volumes of the best comics. And I thought it was about time I blog about this thing, so let’s blog Batman! I am not going to do a post for every single volume, but instead on discrete elements in the narrative — that is, post 1 will likely be on both Batman and Son and The Black Glove, while post 2 will be on Batman RIP. However, this first post is actually #0, because it is a prologue of sorts, on Grant Morrison’s Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth.

This post is something we might call an investigation. In pedagogical terms, this is exploratory writing, in which I do not know the outcome of the piece at the time of its inception, but instead write in order to discover what it is I have to say or what I think. What I’m trying to say here is that I want to take you on a journey, with fights and gay roommates and more fights. Sooo… Remember Scott Pilgrim?

This post is pretty much entirely brought to you by the song “Winifred” by Seth Boyer. Basically, I really got into this song, and as a result this artist. Looking up his stuff online, I learned that this song was, in fact, based on the events of Joss Whedon’s Angel season 5. I didn’t pick up on that at all, though the title reminded me of the character. Which reminded me of what I thought of the show. Which brings us here, to this post. I can’t really take us into the future, at least not in an introductory paragraph… I can, apparently, go from Joss Whedon to a thesis arguing that “realism” is not a method but a goal, and that fantasy does not pursue that goal defined in that way.

It’s still Halloween season, yo! While we all eagerly await the latest Scream Fortress update, I thought I could tell you about something you could be doing in the interim: listening to a podcast. Yes, probably you already know what I’m talking about — Welcome to Night Vale. So this isn’t really a recommendation. My recommendation is, why aren’t you already listening? Instead, I want to talk about its setting methods for my third 2013 Halloween post.

Actually, I do have an interesting link for you. It’s a claim that the study of science fiction provides all the evidence we need for rescuing the liberal arts. I thought that might interest you. However, my life continues to be pretty crazy. I got a new, weird job that I actually can’t tell you about yet, but I will be able to — and it will interest you if you’ve bothered to find yourself at this particular blog. And I have to rush home to actually get my things, as I only came to Memphis to visit, not to stay most of the rest of the summer working.

So I’ll try to get a post for you next week on time, and another extra to make up for this week. Until then!